he veers uncomfortably close to becoming a liberal-humanist Stepin Fetchit." Clayton Dillard of Slant Magazine gave the film a rating of 3 1/2 out of four stars, writing, "As Bruce Beresford’s follow-up to Driving Miss Daisy, Mister Johnson is both a departure and a continuation, trekking toward more difficult narrative terrain given the colonial African setting, but united by the director’s continued interest in depicting characters, on all sides of a given conflict, with considered compassion." In a positive essay about the film, Neil Sinyard of The Criterion Collection wrote that "Beresford is always alert to the comedy of the material" and that Eziashi's performance "was deservedly awarded a Silver Bear at the 1991 Berlin Film Festival." A review of the film in Time Out states that Beresford "photographs the landscape prettily, and the film is neatly turned. Eminently respectable, in fact." In a negative review of the film, Tom Tunney of Empire wrote that the film "fails abysmally because of the grinning shallowness of Eziashi's portrayal and, secondly and much more crucially, because the role he's been lumbered with is a demeaningly cheerful stereotype of the kind that should have gone out with Uncle Tom's Cabin." On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 78% based on reviews from 18 critics. Accolades The film was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival, where lead Maynard Eziashi won the Silver Bear for Best Actor—it was his first major film role. Criterion Edition The film was added to The Criterion Collection along with Beresford's 1980 film Breaker Morant on DVD and Blu-ray on September 22, 2015. References External links Mister Johnson: Off the Beaten Track an essay by Neil Sinyard at the Criterion Collection 1990 films 1990 drama films 20th Century Fox films American drama films Films scored by Georges Delerue Films about race and ethnicity Films based on Irish novels Films directed by Bruce Beresford Films set in Nigeria Films shot in Nigeria Films set in 1923 Films with screenplays by William Boyd (writer) 1990s English-language films 1990s American films